Way back in September, I promised a series of blogs addressing this subject. I had high hopes of delivering a post a week for five weeks on the topic. Needless to say . . . life interjected!

So here, a little later than planned, is the second post in the series.

Step 1 - Change where you work

If I had a thousand bucks for each time I’ve heard someone in technology management say “IT and the business,” I’d have retired long ago. And it’s not just something we hear in technology circles either. The plain truth is technology professionals have been using isolationist language for decades. I say isolationist because any time we refer to "IT and the business” as if they were two different entities, we are creating an artificial divide. As a department of the business, IT is very much part of “the business.”

When technology leaders create this divide between the technology group and the rest of the business, it separates their actions from the purpose of the business. Technology professionals start to see themselves as some sort of technology service provider to the business. But the truth is that the technology team should be integral to delivering value to the customer. If “the business” wanted a technology service provider, the leadership team would outsource IT. Unfortunately, one consequence of managing IT like a vendor is that it becomes much easier for the leadership team to make that outsourcing decision.

Agile and Lean transformations depend to a great extent on cultivating a good sourcing ecosystem. The decisions you make around the partners and providers supporting your transformation and projects will be at the core of a successful strategy. But sourcing strategy needs to go beyond just resource or services providers (read outsourcing) and address a larger ecosystem made of Agile SW development and delivery choices, collaboration and communication capabilities for distributed teams, and teams' physical work spaces, standard equipment, and office layout.

In September, I published a report on how to source your Agile strategy, that describes what the ecosystem looks like and how to navigate it effectively, the document is part of our larger research container on Agile - The Agile and Lean Playbook. The report gives an overview on how large vendors, SIs, and medium to small consulting organizations can (not) help you with your Agile journey but also what you need to do to be successful. Here are some of the takeaways from the research:

What you think about Agile and Lean might not be what your SI thinks. You need to take control of your own destiny with Agile and Lean. Change your application development and delivery sourcing strategy to embed the best talents around the world to help you make it happen. But be careful with the traditional SIs, because Agile is as disruptive to them as it is you, and if they have not been seriously transforming themselves, it will be hard for them to deliver Agile services to you. Some good alternative new fully Agile players exist, including highly specialized external consulting firms. You might want to start testing the ground with these options.

I just recently had a conversation with Peter Hinssen, one of our keynote speakers at Forrester’s colocated CIO Forum and EA Forum in Las Vegas (May 3-4) and our EMEA CIO Forum and EA Forum in Paris (June 19-20).

Peter is both a dynamic speaker and a provocative thought-leader on the rapidly changing relationship of technology, business, and “the business function called IT.” Here’s a short summary of this conversation — and a preview of what he will be talking about at our forums.

On “The New Normal”:

Technology has stopped being “technology,” and digital has just become “normal”: We’ve entered the world of the “New Normal.” The rate of change of the technology world has become the beat to which markets transform. But the rate of change “outside” companies is now faster than the internal velocity of organizations. But how will companies evolve to cope with the changes as a result of the New Normal? How will organizations evolve to respond quickly enough when markets turn into networks of intelligence?

Think of a medieval fortress: It was originally used for a small army, it has walls nine meters thick, and it’s surrounded by buildings hundreds of years old. Upon entering, you are confronted with the concept of eternity.

This fortress is located in the smallest state on earth — though it is also perhaps the best-known state in the world. The business housed within the fortress is what many might classify as a SME but with with complexity of a large enterprise, holy but busy, centralized but truly global — its work spans hundreds of countries with hundreds of currencies and hundreds of languages — and it serves very special and demanding clients.

Have a clue yet of where we are?

Zoom on Italy, then zoom on Rome, then zoom on Vatican City, and you can’t miss the round tower (Torrione Sisto V) where the Vatican Bank, or Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR ), is located. You won’t be allowed in if you are not a client, an employee, or part of a religious congregation. Change comes hard to institutions this steeped in tradition. To give you a clue, IOR’s previous managing director spent his entire career at IOR — 60 years — and retired at the age of 80. We all know it’s the soft and cultural aspects of transformation that are the hardest part for any organization.

Nevertheless, IOR has been going through a major change since 2008, working to replace its legacy IT system with a modern BT one. The new BT system brings more flexibility for the business, richer business functionality, and greater integration and development capabilities. Enabling fast change is the key driver for IOR’s IT transformation program from IT into BT.